Fewer women voted for Vice President Harris this year than voted for President Biden in 2020, exit polling from Tuesday suggests, in what some observers say is an indication that the Harris campaign erred by taking a “broad brush” approach to women rather than appealing to different demographics among female voters.

While Ms. Harris led President Trump among women voters overall, 54 percent to 44 percent, she fell short of Mr. Biden’s 57 percent of the female vote in 2020, exit polls indicate. 

That 3 percent gap is “significant,” a political strategist, Samuel Chen, tells the Sun, noting that Ms. Harris underperformed Mr. Biden in nearly all demographics, not only women. 

“In a race like this, where you’ve got really seven states that will decide the election and decide it in the margins, any small movements, 3 percent of movement in the margins, will make a big difference,” he says. 

This election, polling among women varied widely by ethnicity, with white women favoring Trump 52 percent to Ms. Harris’s 47 percent, while only 7 percent of Black women voted for Trump. Latino women favored Ms. Harris too, 61 percent to Trump’s 37 percent — but Trump gained seven percentage points among Latino women since 2020 exit polling. 

Ms. Harris led white women who are college graduates by wide margins — 20 percentage points — but Trump led by 25 percentage points among white women without a college degree.

The exit polling suggests women may not have turned out for Ms. Harris the way that Democrats were counting on.

“I think more men voted this time, but I also think there was a little bit of underestimation on the Harris campaign about these demographics like women,” Mr. Chen says. “And one of the things that the Democratic Party has done in the past that is ill-advised is they often paint with a broad brush, and so you see it with Latinos — they almost treat all Latinos alike — and they do the same thing with women.” 

In the days leading up to the election, Ms. Harris sought to firm up the women’s vote, and an ad supporting Ms. Harris urged women to vote for her in secret from their husbands. “What happens in the booth, stays in the booth,” the ad said. “You can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know.”

“I didn’t see anything from the Harris campaign that tried to reach different demographics of women, and it was almost just this broad brush of all women are included,” Mr. Chen says, noting that the message to wives to keep their ballots secret from their husbands may appeal to “a certain demographic of women, but certainly not all of them.”

“I think that was just an underestimation on their part, and they overplayed their hands,” he says.

Democrats, including the Harris campaign, have made women’s reproductive rights and abortion a top issue since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Placing abortion measures on state ballots had been seen as a winning strategy — succeeding in all seven states it had been tested — until the streak broke this election. Of the ten states considering abortion-related measures, the side favoring abortion rights failed in Florida, South Dakota, and Nebraska. 

 In the seven states where abortion advocates won, four of those states — Montana, Missouri, Nevada, and Arizona — are states that Trump either won or is leading, suggesting that winning abortion in the state doesn’t necessarily reflect a presidential outcome. 

That disconnect could show an “underestimation from the Democrats on the economy,” Mr. Chen says, considering that “when the economy is bad, or is at least perceived to be bad, that becomes the number one issue.” Additionally, Trump did not run on a traditional Republican “pro-life platform” from a federal level, instead maintaining that it’s “strictly a state issue.” 

“I think you see this play out where you had pro-choice voters willing to vote for Trump, and this is why I think the Harris campaign overplayed it — they spent so much money just pressing him on abortion bans,” Mr. Chen says. “I think the smarter play would have been to press him on his flip flop, and say you can’t believe anything this guy says, he’ll still be pro-life when he needs to win pro-life voters and pro-choice when he needs to win pro-choice voters.”

Democrats seemed to have “tunnel vision” on abortion, going “all in” on it, he adds, underestimating the fact that voters could vote for Trump because of issues like the economy while still voting for abortion ballot measures in their states.